Looking for ICF-certified life coaching programs w/ a spiritual focus

[Emerald]

44 minutes ago, Key Elements said:

Well, what I mean is, if you have a desire to just share your most profound spiritual experience and how you got there in your unique spiritual path (ie. being the no-self and falling back into your ego with love/bliss), you can. You could describe it in a let's say a book or an app somewhere in a creative way. However, not many ppl will be able to relate. Maybe perhaps a small handful of ppl will be able to if you have a large target audience. If you wrote 5 popular books, maybe you could write it in one somewhere and see what happens.

For those who are able to relate (and there won't be many, probably a small handful), they'll make comments somewhere, maybe in your blog/forum, and you could pick them out somehow to talk to them. That's what I mean.

I've spoken about these kinds of experiences before on my channel from a lot of different angles. But it's always to help facilitate people to look deeper at situations in their own life and look deeper into their internal experience and to reintegrate what has been repressed and forgotten. I got a lot of insights into how repression works when I had my experience of ego transcendence. So, I like to share my experiences to illustrate the mechanisms at work so that people can see what they're up against. 

But if I wrote some books, I would keep my focus more toward what I feel that most people can benefit from. Now, I've considered writing a "seeker's guidebook" to different things to contemplate and different angles to view things from. So, I suppose higher truths would come into that book quite a bit.

But honestly, I'm much more interested in writing things that will help solving issues (of an internal nature) that everyone (or most everyone) is suffering from, like self-hatred, judgment, etc. And sometimes higher truths are applicable, but other times more practical truths are more appropriate. 

But with regard to coaching, the client would be coming to me with specific goals or issues to overcome. So, I would tailor the sessions to them, and addressing their specific needs. 

 

[Key Elements]

@Emerald cool. You know, sometimes you need to work to be the breadwinner of the family as well as bootstrap. That maybe the reason you want to coach. Of course, #1 reason is you love helping ppl in that way.The classes sound expensive, esp the ones Leo suggested. Are you certain that you can't pick up the skills on your own? Well, there must be a good reason why Leo suggested those. You have a book suggestion on this thread already. That's good.

[Nahm]

@Emerald I gotta say, I agree with @Joseph Maynor. I think you are two life coaching books away from seeing you are already over qualified. I’d read a couple books and check. I’ve been doing one on one 3 hour ‘wake up’ socratic conversations, and I recently read a book on life coaching. I was surprised to see, and I think you would be too, that’s much more about asking the right question at the right time and listening, than it is drawing on your wealth of knowledge and experience. You might not prefer the coaching route, but it might be a perfect ingredient for your future ’recipe’. You’re great at whatever you do anyways....and people have been asking for your coaching for a year already...just sayin...some people would find that sufficient to proceed. ? 

[Emerald]

3 hours ago, Key Elements said:

@Emerald cool. You know, sometimes you need to work to be the breadwinner of the family as well as bootstrap. That maybe the reason you want to coach. Of course, #1 reason is you love helping ppl in that way.The classes sound expensive, esp the ones Leo suggested. Are you certain that you can't pick up the skills on your own? Well, there must be a good reason why Leo suggested those. You have a book suggestion on this thread already. That's good.

Certainly, there is a financial motivation behind my desire to go into coaching. But I also want a career that actually fits with my life's purpose, where I can focus on giving value in the way I'm most suited to. Currently, I spend almost 40 hours a week as a substitute teacher. And I'm okay at the job, and I enjoy certain aspects of it. But I never get the feeling like it was what I was meant to do. I mostly do it because I'm not well suited to full-time teaching, due to the fact that I have a personality that invites people in.

Now, in regard to my life's purpose, this is a positive thing. But with regard to being a classroom teacher, it's super stressful for me. I have to keep most of my personality back, because if I show my personality in that setting, there will be at least one student who takes my open-ness as an invitation for fuckery. And once that one person does that, others follow. 

So, I have to basically pretend to be a rigid person to keep the classroom under control. This is why substitute teaching works for me but regular teaching does not. Because when I'm subbing I can be that rigid person and lay down the law to keep the duckies in a row. And the students won't try me because they believe my front. But once I get comfortable and get to know my students, I naturally start to relax and care and open up. And that's when classroom management becomes a struggle against my own natural tendencies. Because there will always be a student or two, that take my open-ness as an invitation for misbehavior.

So, that's why I sub instead of teach, even though I make like a third of what I did as a full-time teacher. So, I make like $12000 a year. But it's better than making the $38,000 a year that I used to make as a regular teacher working 60+ hours a weak and always struggling despite all the work I was putting in. 

But I probably could do okay with it, even just reading a few books. But I'm pretty set on going all the way and doing a course. I'm sure there are plenty of things that it can teach me that I wouldn't otherwise anticipate. So, I'm going to see if I can find a way to get the money to pay for the course. I'm sure that it will be worth it in the end. 

I just really need to get my life in alignment with what I really want to do. Making a living has always been a struggle for me. And I like to think this money struggle is life's way of pushing me into something I'm much more suited to so that I can give my time to something that the world would benefit from. And what's great about not making a ton of money is that it shouldn't be too long before I can do that and make the same or better living than I do now. I've just always had a lot of limiting mindsets around needing to have a 9 to 5 job in order to be safe with my finances, what little they are. But I'm just now considering that perhaps it is doable for me to make a living doing the thing that comes most naturally. 

[Emerald]

1 hour ago, Nahm said:

@Emerald I gotta say, I agree with @Joseph Maynor. I think you are two life coaching books away from seeing you are already over qualified. I’d read a couple books and check. I’ve been doing one on one 3 hour ‘wake up’ socratic conversations, and I recently read a book on life coaching. I was surprised to see, and I think you would be too, that’s much more about asking the right question at the right time and listening, than it is drawing on your wealth of knowledge and experience. You might not prefer the coaching route, but it might be a perfect ingredient for your future ’recipe’. You’re great at whatever you do anyways....and people have been asking for your coaching for a year already...just sayin...some people would find that sufficient to proceed. ? 

Thank you for the sentiments.  I'm sure that a lot of people would consider me sufficient as a coach now. And that's why I feel comfortable enough to get some "guinea pigs" to try it out on. But I know that I would feel as though I was bluffing and faking it, which I would be. I would be far more comfortable with completing a program and being as qualified as is possible. I don't like to feel like I'm cutting corners. 

Then, once I do that, I can establish a firm professional foundation for my practice and offer both long-term coaching and one-off sessions as well. And I'll have more professional clout and experience to make myself and other more confident in the service I'd be offering.

I've looked into the IPEC program that Leo suggested, and I do feel that the things they would be teaching dovetail nicely with the way I want to approach coaching because it is geared toward becoming aware of what's unconscious that stands in the way of personal growth. And the creator of the course took strong influence from psychotherapy, NLP, consciousness work, and other depth psychology related things, which is all right up my alley. 

[Nahm]

@Emerald Makes good sense to me. I’m sure you’ll learn a lot. If you want a “guidance pig”, I’d be happy to help. Best of luck!??

[ChimpBrain]

Funny you posted this, I was just wondering a week or two ago if you offered coaching in addition to your channel. I'll also put my name in the hat if you need additional volunteer Guinea pigs. 

[Emerald]

@Nahm @ChimpBrain Thank you for the guinea pig offer.  I have it posted as a tier on my channel's Patreon page, if you want more details about it. Here is the link:

https://www.patreon.com/thediamondnet

[Key Elements]

@Emerald Here's another idea. Maybe after you've taken some classes, you could start coaching ppl online with your own website, PayPal account, and put an ad in a decent magazine or somewhere. I found my children's daycare/school in a very good magazine ad at the local public library when they were little. The point to this is, if you start working online in terms of self-employment instead of an outside job, if you decide to move, you don't have to lose your job. You could even work on your smartphone. 

[Emerald]

57 minutes ago, Key Elements said:

@Emerald Here's another idea. Maybe after you've taken some classes, you could start coaching ppl online with your own website, PayPal account, and put an ad in a decent magazine or somewhere. I found my children's daycare/school in a very good magazine ad at the local public library when they were little. The point to this is, if you start working online in terms of self-employment instead of an outside job, if you decide to move, you don't have to lose your job. You could even work on your smartphone. 

I definitely plan to work mostly online. I could do a face to face meeting if someone is close-by to me. But mostly, my established audience is online and at random corners of the Earth. So, I probably wouldn't do the magazine thing. That would be better if I had a local brick and mortar business. 

I'd just use my channel and my FB page to advertise it. And I think I'll be able to get clients pretty quickly. Currently, I've done very little advertising for my 'guinea pig' experiment and I only have 4 out of the 10 slots left. And most of my subscriber base doesn't even know about it yet, because I haven't made a video announcement about it. 

I was thinking that once I am certified, I could offer 'one-off' 30 and 60 minute sessions through my Patreon account. And I would offer a more extensive coaching program through my website, which would be a lot more involved and have a whole system around it. 

[Key Elements]

15 hours ago, Emerald said:

So, I probably wouldn't do the magazine thing. That would be better if I had a local brick and mortar business. 

Yes, I understand. The reason why I mentioned this is because I met a landlady once who told me that she prefers to rent out her property to white collar, married couples with small families (ie 1-2 children). She said that from her experience these type of ppl are the most stable, financially and emotionally. They are mainly decent and pay their rent on time. They stay with you the longest. This wasn't in the US. I know that US has discrimination laws against this. But, the point is, I'm talking about the target audience. I met a graphic artist who is self-employed and met his clients through all kinds of people when he first started his self-employment business. He ran into some trouble of getting some clients who did not pay him on time or who did not pay him at all and just took off. No they were not white collar, married with children. This is something that caught my attention. When you coach professionally, maybe perhaps, you may want to offer them a free session or a discounted session and make them pay first through an online account. I'm just sharing my thoughts. It seems like where you advertise counts toward who your clients and target audience will be.

[Emerald]

13 hours ago, Key Elements said:

Yes, I understand. The reason why I mentioned this is because I met a landlady once who told me that she prefers to rent out her property to white collar, married couples with small families (ie 1-2 children). She said that from her experience these type of ppl are the most stable, financially and emotionally. They are mainly decent and pay their rent on time. They stay with you the longest. This wasn't in the US. I know that US has discrimination laws against this. But, the point is, I'm talking about the target audience. I met a graphic artist who is self-employed and met his clients through all kinds of people when he first started his self-employment business. He ran into some trouble of getting some clients who did not pay him on time or who did not pay him at all and just took off. No they were not white collar, married with children. This is something that caught my attention. When you coach professionally, maybe perhaps, you may want to offer them a free session or a discounted session and make them pay first through an online account. I'm just sharing my thoughts. It seems like where you advertise counts toward who your clients and target audience will be.

I'm running the service through my Patreon, so they actually have to pledge and pay first. Then, when I do full-time coaching, I will probably continue doing one-off sessions through Patreon, but do my more extensive coaching practice through my website, which would also be paid in advance. 

[MsNobody]

@Emerald Hey emerald, I saw you are interested in the iPEC course, I'm about to finish the certification, if you have any questions about the course or the content send me an inbox I will be happy to answer

[Emerald]

3 minutes ago, MsNobody said:

@Emerald Hey emerald, I saw you are interested in the iPEC course, I'm about to finish the certification, if you have any questions about the course or the content send me an inbox I will be happy to answer

That would be excellent! I'm sure I'll have a ton.

[Key Elements]

On 20/08/2018 at 1:12 PM, Emerald said:

I'm running the service through my Patreon, so they actually have to pledge and pay first. Then, when I do full-time coaching, I will probably continue doing one-off sessions through Patreon, but do my more extensive coaching practice through my website, which would also be paid in advance. 

Congrats! I feel happy for you that you found what you love to do and incorporate it with your spiritual path. It's rare that ppl do this. 

I heard of a profound saying, and I'm still thinking this could get deeper as we go along:

"I spend my entire life helping people close the gap between where they are now and where they want to be in life, but little did I know the gap could be closed this quickly." -A Life Coach.

He might just be talking about it from a financial perspective. I'm trying to look at it from Maslow's -- to also contribute to humanity as well -- all is you after all. 

[Emerald]

7 minutes ago, Key Elements said:

Congrats! I feel happy for you that you found what you love to do and incorporate it with your spiritual path. It's rare that ppl do this. 

I heard of a profound saying, and I'm still thinking this could get deeper as we go along:

"I spend my entire life helping people close the gap between where they are now and where they want to be in life, but little did I know the gap could be closed this quickly." -A Life Coach.

He might just be talking about it from a financial perspective. I'm trying to look at it from Maslow's -- to also contribute to humanity as well -- all is you after all. 

Thank you! This is very inspiring to me!